Madrid, Mar 26 (EFE).- The last block of the pension reform faces its validation this Thursday in the Congress of Deputies, a process that will foreseeably pass successfully with the support of the usual parliamentary partners of the coalition government.
The reform, focused on improving the income of the system and guaranteeing the adequacy of pensions, has the approval of the European Commission and the unions, while the employers opposed some changes that entail higher business costs via higher contributions , fundamentally for the highest wages.
The royal decree-law also includes changes in the computation period (the years of working life used to calculate the initial pension), which the Minister of Inclusion, José Luis Escrivá, ended up fitting with a dual formula that will allow choosing between the 25 current years or gradually expand to 29, being able to rule out the two worst.
This solution unblocked one of the most complex points of the negotiation, since both Unidas Podemos as well as other parliamentary groups and the unions were opposed to an extension of this element as Escrivá initially intended.
Finally, the approach has convinced the purples and the unions and has paved the way for the usual parliamentary partners of the Executive, such as ERC or EH Bildu, to welcome a reform that PP, Vox or Ciudadanos have criticized from the beginning.
Thus, although the popular ones say they have not yet decided on the direction of the vote, the party leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has insisted this week on criticizing a reform that postpones the “accounts” on the “hole” of pensions until 2025 .
Feijóo also pointed out in Brussels that the government of Pedro Sánchez is doing the “exactly the opposite” of Emmanuel Macron in France with its pension reform and “surely one of the two is wrong”.
Faced with this, the partners on the left, ERC and EH Bildu, have already valued the measures contained in the norm in the Toledo Pact, although they pointed out possible improvements that will be introduced in the processing of the decree as a bill.
From the PNV they have ruled out the “no” but they have already pointed out that some measures “call into question the contributory nature of the system”, in reference to the solidarity quota and the intergenerational equity mechanism (MEI).
Along with this, they have asked the Government to fulfill its commitments to the cooperatives.
EH Bildu has already advanced its support in exchange for an agreement with the Government to raise the minimum widow’s pensions between 2024 and 2027 -17% for individual ones and 30% for the modality with family responsibilities- and equate them to the minimum pensions contributory.
And, at the request of the PDeCAT, the decree law has already introduced an additional element of progressivity in the surcharge for the highest salaries.
Escrivá, who was negotiating the reform “on three sides” with the parliamentary groups, social agents and the coalition partner, has shown himself confident that he will receive the majority support of the groups in Congress.
Validating these pension measures is key to the fourth disbursement of European funds, since it is one of the milestones committed to Brussels within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.